Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition; Morgan: 52.5-47.5

Morgan finds serious slippage in support for the Coalition for the first time since Malcolm Turnbull became leader, bringing it more closely into line with Essential Research, which continues to find the Coalition with a narrow lead.

It looks like the only two new federal polls this week are the regular Essential Research and Roy Morgan series, and a solid drop for the Coalition from Roy Morgan brings the two much closer together than they have been since Malcolm Turnbull assumed the prime ministership. Essential is its usual stable self, with the Coalition’s modest two-party lead of 51-49 unchanged on last week. The primary votes are 43% for the Coalition (down one), 35% for Labor (steady) and 11% for the Greens (steady). The voting intention results were derived from online polling conducted over the two previous weeks, from an overall sample of about 2000. From this week’s sample of 1000 only, the poll also offers us Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Malcolm Turnbull steady on 51% approval and up two on disapproval to 27%, while Bill Shorten is steady on 27% approval and up one on disapproval to 48%. Turnbull’s lead on preferred prime minister has increased from 51-18 to 52-15. Respondents were also asked to register two reasons why the government might wish to reform the tax system, for which the most popular response by some margin was “to address the budget deficit”, which was rated first or second by 58%. Favoured possibilities for revenue raising followed the usual pattern in coming in highest for proposals targeting multinational corporations and high income earners, with a GST increase rating last out of seven listed options. When forced to choose between higher income tax or a higher GST, 37% came down for don’t know.

Morgan’s two-party measures record their first significant movement of the Turnbull era, with the Coalition’s respondent-allocated two-party lead down from 55-45 to 52.5-47.5, and previous election preferences down from 54-46 to 52.5-47.5. Clearly rounding and changed preference flows had a fair bit to do with this, because the primary votes are little changed, with the Coalition steady on 43.5%, Labor up a point to 29%, and the Greens up a point to 16%. The poll was conducted by face-to-face and SMS over the two previous weekends, from a sample of 3072.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

786 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition; Morgan: 52.5-47.5”

Comments Page 12 of 16
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  1. Ancestors
    Show full conversation
    Adam Gartrell
    6m6 minutes ago
    Adam Gartrell ‏@adamgartrell
    @vanOnselenP Wrong Peter
    Peter van Onselen
    Peter van Onselen – Verified account ‏@vanOnselenP

    @adamgartrell I’ll have to take you both at your word but without an alternative I’m sorry but I am not convinced!

  2. [Adam Gartrell ‏@adamgartrell
    @vanOnselenP @ellenwhinnett Journalist baiting journalist to reveal sources on Twitter? Weird.]

    [Peter van Onselen
    Peter van Onselen – Verified account ‏@vanOnselenP
    @adamgartrell @ellenwhinnett we all know journalists to protect their sources can mislead if needed. But I’ll assume u 2 aren’t & apologise!
    8:14 PM – 9 Feb 2016]

  3. Burke managed to get several members of the Government to vote against the Government.

    Raucous laughter from those on the Speaker’s left.

  4. Bob’s Uncle

    [Prices are set by what the rental market will bear – they are entirely unrelated to financing costs of landlords.]

    This is mostly true. However, if costs get too great, it may affect the supply of property and force up rents somewhat. It’s not entirely unrelated, but the relationship is very, very elastic.

  5. samdastyari: Tax office has moved 6 big companies into the ‘high risk’ category. These companies have a minimum of over $30billion in revenue. Huge sums.

  6. [Totally agree. But, if the price people are willing/able to pay for a good – is less than a seller is prepared to accept in terms of covering their costs and making a profit, then the supply is going to dry up and then, if the demand persists, prices are going to rise rapidly…]

    Bollocks!

    There is very little variable cost on property that is born by the owner, but quite a few fixed costs (i.e. rates, insurance, land tax, agent fees) that a landlord pays whether the property is occupied or not.

    If an investor can’t make enough revenue from there asset to cover these costs, then its time to get out – regardless of asset class.

    Yes, that means selling an investment property, and if rents have dropped, possibly realising a loss. That is the mechanism by which all asset prices and net present values equilibrate.

    Or are you suggesting existing houses are just going to disappear?

    Bob’s Uncle is spot on.

  7. political_alert: Shadow Attorney-General @markdreyfusQCMP will hold a press conference on the PM’s ‘repeated refusal to sack @stuartrobertmp’, 3:30pm #auspol

  8. mb

    [The Dem leadership has put all its eggs in the Hillary basket, and I reckon they could end up having a problem, especially if the highly charismatic and populist Trump is her eventual opponent.]

    Trump is neither populist or charismatic. He appeals to a certain sector of the US population – mostly disgruntled middle-age whites who are looking for someone to blame. Mexicans, Muslims, and feminists are all easy scapegoats.

    The Dems are licking their lips at the notion of Trump as the GOP nominee. The GOP establishment are aghast at the prospect.

  9. markdreyfusQCMP: Malcolm Turnbull must show some leadership and sack Stuart Robert. His continuing presence in ministry is untenable #auspol

  10. Yep and Abc24 didnt even show it

    [Dave Donovan
    Dave Donovan – ‏@davrosz

    Sky News cut off an interview with Mark Dreyfus just as they were about to get to the questions]

  11. meher baba

    [ So, as I said, the supply would quickly dry up without negative gearing unless house prices fall and/or rents go up significantly. ]

    Prices stabilizing – or more likely increasing well below CPI – has to be the ultimate goal, until rents catch up and investment properties becomes a good investment just for rental returns again, without negative gearing and without excessive capital gains.

    The difficult bit is to make this happen without crashing the sector.

  12. LU @ 558

    It depends on each owner’s situation at the time. There is no clear rule. If a property owner can service the costs (including interest) they will most likely hang on if they believe the property market will improve. If they can’t, they will sell if they have no choice – but then there might be a point where selling below a certain amount is more costly than maintaining the property.

    Of course, a good investor will drop rents to keep the cash flow going, even at a larger loss. If the rents go low enough, vacancy rates will drop provided that the demand has not gone down too (typically in a place where there is a drop in employment opportunities).

    And so forth.

    Put quite simply, it is impossible to put things as simply as so many here have done so. The property market is extraordinarily complex and any governmental changes will have impacts both intended and unintended.

    This is not to say there should not be changes. Negative gearing as it is currently set up is not fit for purpose because it encourages increased investment in property where the capital gain is in the land, rather than in accommodation purchased. But these things need to be carefully examined.

    Eliminating negative gearing and other concessions for property owners and deciding what, if anything, they are replaced with will have significant consequences over the medium term and, quite possibly, the short term. And the consequences will vary substantially depending on each specific market or market segment around the country.

    And references back to what happened in the mid-1980s is pointless. Almost certainly the changes in the property market reflected local conditions as much as, if not more, than the change in tax treatment. The fact is that the changes were not in place for long enough to actually measure the specific changes.

    Bottom line is that any tax concession (which is a form of spending by way of foregone revenue) needs to be specifically tailored to whatever public policy objectives are to be achieved – and should not create undesirable impacts. The issue of whether it is particularly fair to investors generally (apart from those who have invested on the basis of existing laws) is not relevant. If the tax system was to be fair, everyone should be able to claim their costs of getting to and from work. But they can’t.

    So let’s look at public policy and the primary objective should be to maximise the opportunity for everyone to get basic reasonable accommodation at the least cost to themselves and the public purse. Everything else is self serving.

  13. Tom I hate to agree with Bemused but after checking Wikipedia I am sure that ‘Agile’ development teams are small, upto 9 people, and they deliver programs in 4 to 6 weeks max.

    ‘Agile’ development is not a coding team based in Bangalore working to a 12 or 24 month deadline.

    If there is clear separation between users and developers and the specifications are wrangled over – its not ‘agile’. If the programmer can’t modify the specification its not ‘agile’

    By its very business model Accenture is not ‘agile’.
    Payment systems, billing systems usually have high levels of auditability built into them making them not ‘agile’

    In my experience ‘agile’ development is the only way to do data mining and overall system report

  14. another, as Turnbull rose to his feet to become the first Prime Minister to begin an address to the Parliament in the language of the traditional owners of the land on which it is built.
    There is a convention that when the PM addresses the chamber, his troops are there in force to demonstrate solidarity. It went by the board on Wednesday morning.
    There is also a convention that when a subject of national importance that goes to questions of national identity or national security is broached by the nation’s leaders, all MPs take their seats. That, too, was waived on the Coalition side.

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/several-gaps-revealed-in-malcolm-turnbulls-first-foray-into-indigenous-affairs-20160210-gmqby2.html#ixzz3zjlWy2QN
    Follow us: @theage on Twitter | theageAustralia on Facebook

  15. [ So, as I said, the supply would quickly dry up without negative gearing unless house prices fall and/or rents go up significantly. ]

    No so apparently. From last year –

    [ Joe Hockey outclassed on Q&A, by an economist

    Treasurer Joe Hockey was upstaged and shirtfronted on Q&A Monday night, but not by a member of the audience or a political opponent.

    The man who cut him down to size on questions including negative gearing, tax and infrastructure spending was John Daley, the Melbourne-based research economist who runs the Grattan Institute.

    Asked why he hadn’t abolished the tax concession known as negative gearing that rewards property investors for recording tax losses Hockey said it might up rents.

    When Bob Hawke did it in the 1980s “you saw a surge in rents and those people who were paying rents are usually – not always, but usually – people that can’t afford in many cases to buy their own homes”.

    Daley set him straight.

    It was absolutely true that rents went up fast in Sydney, “which might have been there wasn’t a lot of housing being built in Sydney in the couple of years previously”.

    “But look beyond Sydney and rents were dead – barely moved in Brisbane, didn’t go up very far in Melbourne, didn’t go up very far in Adelaide. They did go up very fast in Perth which makes you suspect very strongly that the race memory we have of abolish negative gearing, that rents will go up, is a race memory built on Sydney.”

    Daley said rents shouldn’t go up because “by definition what happens at the auction is that the investor doesn’t win the auction but someone who wants to live in the house does. Net impact, there is one less renter and there is one less rental property.

    Net impact on the rental market, zero.”]

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockey-outclassed-on-qa-by-an-economist-20150316-1m0nrs.html

  16. You gotta feel for PVO

    [Peter van Onselen
    Peter van Onselen – Verified account ‏@vanOnselenP

    My apologies to @adamgartrell and @ellenwhinnett. Great yarn and obviously I don’t know the source/s. Withdrawn unreservedly!]

  17. Bob’s Uncle as a close friend of landlords, I agree with you that negative gearing wont have much effect on rents or numbers of rental properties.
    Landlords hold the property to generate an income or they hold the property to generate capital gains upon sale of the property.

    Melbourne income landlords with blocks of flats in South Yarra and Toorak are being forced to sell the whole block because the state based progressive land tax has become punitive. They are buying lower valued property to generate the same rental while paying less land tax.

    Landlords after capital gains have found that the property they bought has paid off enough of the mortgage for them to be able to use the equity in that property and buy another property at the 5 year mark.

  18. Victoria @ 566 I had to read that twice.
    First reading I thought the Coalition didn’t attend and also the opposition hadn’t attended rather than Malcolm has no support from his own side for his ‘closing the gap’

  19. TPOF

    [Put quite simply, it is impossible to put things as simply as so many here have done so. ]

    No, no, it is easy to put it simply.

    The supply of rentals is fixed over the short term – you can’t build a house in 6 weeks, or barely even in 6 months.

    Demand for rentals is variable – it can change as quickly as an obnoxious b/millionare MP can “discover” that his local factory is insolvent.

    So, simply put: the amount of housing available for rent is set by supply, while the price at which it is rented is set by demand.

    Now, over the medium to long term, the decision to invest in housing, existing or otherwise, and the price at which property trades, depends on the returns available from renting, the cost of financing and few other factors. Notably one of these other factors is the tax treatment of the asset wrt income and losses and capital gains.

    But these things don’t affect rents in the short term because they don’t have any effect on demand.* It’s not until tax treatments affect the supply of new housing that price are affected. Which is why keeping NG on new builds is far from the worst idea ever.

    * Assuming changes in interest rates don’t significantly affect demand, which might not be strictly true – Eg lower IRs = less interest income = lower demand.

  20. I thought I heard a LP minister in QT make some comment about how there was plenty of room on the back bench today. Obviously having a go at his own.

  21. [In my experience ‘agile’ development is the only way to do data mining and overall system report]

    I have a friend who left a very large accountancy firm to start his own data mining and visualisation business. Within 6 months (which was as early as they could compete) they were outbidding his old employer. Using a team of 6.

    Let’s say he is a very happy man.

  22. LU @ 571

    [The supply of rentals is fixed over the short term – you can’t build a house in 6 weeks, or barely even in 6 months]

    The supply of rentals also depends on vacancy rates at any given time. When said employer goes bust, nothing happens to supply and demand until people start to move out or are evicted for non-payment of rent. But if that happens – or if there is a seasonal change, for example with teachers and university students renting – then supply opens up without any property being built.

    That said, I have no problem with the suggestion of negative gearing for new builds. Indeed, that might ensure that more money is invested in property where the accommodation, not the underlying land, is the investment target. All I’m saying is that it is complex and there is a somewhat naive attitude (not necessarily your attitude) around the place that it is a zero sum game – i.e., every person who rents or seeks to rent is a frustrated home buyer. Nothing could be further from the truth in the property market.

  23. billie@565

    Tom I hate to agree with Bemused but after checking Wikipedia I am sure that ‘Agile’ development teams are small, upto 9 people, and they deliver programs in 4 to 6 weeks max.

    ‘Agile’ development is not a coding team based in Bangalore working to a 12 or 24 month deadline.

    If there is clear separation between users and developers and the specifications are wrangled over – its not ‘agile’. If the programmer can’t modify the specification its not ‘agile’

    By its very business model Accenture is not ‘agile’.
    Payment systems, billing systems usually have high levels of auditability built into them making them not ‘agile’

    In my experience ‘agile’ development is the only way to do data mining and overall system report

    Why do you hate to agree with me?

    I agree/disagree with arguments, not who puts them.

    There are all sorts of things having the ‘agile’ label attached and I am unaware of any rigid definitions that can be relied on.

    There are certain characteristics which are common, including co-located teams and technical and business people being involved in the team.

  24. mh @ 572

    [I thought I heard a LP minister in QT make some comment about how there was plenty of room on the back bench today. Obviously having a go at his own.]

    That was an in-joke. The particular MP, whose name escapes me, was commenting on the fact that his closest neighbour, the somewhat corpulent Ewen Jones, had been booted from the Chamber under s94A, leaving him with more elbow room during the remainder of QT.

  25. dave@567: ““But look beyond Sydney and rents were dead – barely moved in Brisbane, didn’t go up very far in Melbourne, didn’t go up very far in Adelaide. They did go up very fast in Perth which makes you suspect very strongly that the race memory we have of abolish negative gearing, that rents will go up, is a race memory built on Sydney.”

    Daley said rents shouldn’t go up because “by definition what happens at the auction is that the investor doesn’t win the auction but someone who wants to live in the house does. Net impact, there is one less renter and there is one less rental property.

    Net impact on the rental market, zero.”

    What a giggle: it’s a reminder of the fact that Daley is a lawyer rather than an economist.

    As if housing market were incredibly inelastic that, for every additional home purchaser, there will be one fewer renter. A first year economic student knows better than that!

    As for rent increases. Under the 1985 changes, existing properties were quarantined. So, any impact on rents was always going to show up first in the city with the fastest growing population where, ipso facto, there would be a growing demand for rental properties, requiring more investment.

    According to what I’ve heard from people in the sector, by 1987 it was becoming clear in Sydney that the rate at which new rental properties were coming onto the market was noticeably slowing down, and that rents were on the rise. The NSW Labor Government panicked and persuaded the Federal Government to reverse the decision (but this didn’t save Unsworth in 1988).

    The impact on rental supply would have shown up over time in other cities. You can’t halve the effective return on an investment overnight and expect to see investors continue to take up that product at the same rate as before. Existing investors will be quarantined, so they won’t be exiting. But new investors won’t come in, supply will gradually fall and, eventually, the existing investors will find themselves in a position to increase rents quite significantly.

    That’s economics 101.

  26. Phil Coorey

    [While Mr Truss’s retirement has been long anticipated, the departure of Mr Robb has come as a shock. As Trade and Investment Minister since the 2013 election, he has been one of the Coalition’s best performers, sealing free trade deals with China, Japan and South Korea.]

    Debatable. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be around when blame is sheeted home.

  27. [The supply of rentals also depends on vacancy rates at any given time. ]

    Well, I’m calling supply the number of properties available for rent, both those that are currently tenanted and those that are vacant. Like a car park with 500 spaces – supply is 500 even if 499 are currently occupied.

    So when said employer goes bust, the number of houses available to rent doesn’t change, but the clearing price at which all houses are occupied drops. Sometimes it drops so far and so fast that this sort of thing happens to the property owners:

    2012 Property Investor of Year goes bust

    Rigid supply coupled to significant fixed costs is the typical cause of precipitous drops in asset prices. You see this in any leveraged firm (fixed loan repayments) that faces a spot price collapse in the commodities it produces – such as the example of Clive Palmer’s QNI we were alluding to above – where the company’s fixed costs quickly outstrip revenue.

  28. srpeatling: Ministers are “dropping like flies around Malcolm Turnbull,” says @Tony_Burke at news Andrew Robb & Warren Truss are both leaving politics.

  29. The departures of Robb and Truzzzz and the reshuffle speculation will no doubt act as somewhat of a deflection away from the Robert matter.

    Will be interesting to see who gets promotions from the Govt backbenches.

  30. Rex

    [ The departures of Robb and Truzzzz and the reshuffle speculation will no doubt act as somewhat of a deflection away from the Robert matter. ]

    It gives Mal the chance to drop Robert quietly as part of a broader “reshuffle”. If he doesn’t jump at the chance, he’s a fool.

  31. [That’s economics 101.]

    And that’s also the problem. You haven’t looked at the unearned economic rents that accrue to quasi-monopoly assets like property.

    [You can’t halve the effective return on an investment overnight and expect to see investors continue to take up that product at the same rate as before.]

    Not at the same price, you can’t, but again, that is the point – the price of land will drop. Then investors will re-enter the market. Rents aren’t affected by this mechanism.

    This isn’t some Marxist or Keynesian thing either – the theory predates, but was formalised by, Ricardo.

  32. TPOF if you were really keen you house homeless people in converted shipping containers like they do in Amsterdam. It might take a while to set up but once operational there could multiple modules completed per day

    I know a fellow who converts Hino buses into motor homes in 2 weeks

  33. in this afternoons NBN debate a Lib responded to concerns that the cost of Turnbulls inferior copper wire patchwork version of the NBN has blown out to 56 Billion, by quoting extensively from a report that claimed Labors all optic Fibre NBN would have eventually blown out to.. 56 Billion

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